


Cabeswater Connection

by LittleLeyLine



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Cabeswater - Freeform, Just Friendship, M/M, Not Romance, post-trk, pynch - Freeform, trc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-30
Updated: 2016-05-30
Packaged: 2018-07-11 06:07:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7032346
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleLeyLine/pseuds/LittleLeyLine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Gansey returns from his trip for the summer, he and Adam realize that Cabeswater left a bigger impact on Gansey than they had originally thought: Cabeswater can connect with Adam through Gansey.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cabeswater Connection

The day Gansey got back from his year-long adventure with Henry and Blue was the day he discovered what it meant to have a life force created by Cabeswater.

It was a warm June evening; the sun was setting and casting dark shadows into the Barns, and the wind was blowing a refreshing breeze through the open windows. Before arriving at the Barns, Gansey had dropped Henry off at the home of the Vancouver crowd and Blue off at 300 Fox Way. They each had their own groups to catch up with and tell the tales of the past year. Gansey’s main priorities in Henrietta fell with Ronan Lynch and Adam Parrish.

So here he was, sitting on the living room floor of the Barns, leaning against the leather couch that Adam was currently lying on. Ronan was in the kitchen with Opal, heating up a frozen pizza. Ronan could actually cook a decent meal, but he and Adam had spent all afternoon chasing Opal around the Barns in a surprisingly intense game of tag and were too tired to cook anything big. 

Also Adam’s cooking was the edible equivalent of ash, so tonight a frozen pizza was a safe choice. 

Gansey had his traveling backpack next to his legs on the floor and was thumbing through hundreds of photos from his trip to Venezuela, California, Vancouver (for Henry’s benefit), Alaska, Rome, and about a dozen other locations. Adam was patiently listening as Gansey’s speech quickened with excitement as he dove into a historical tangent about the Native American tribes living in Alaska. 

“…and so Blue asked if she could try it like she attempts everything with her avant-garde methods and at first they vacillated but then they allowed her to polish the brilliant framework of the archaic kayak which dates back to-”

Adam laughed softly to himself and spoke, with his Henrietta accent showing, “Even when your speakin’ too fast to breath, you still work in those unnecessarily fancy words.” Then, in an accent that sounded suspiciously like Malory, “It astounds me, Professor Gansey.”

Gansey set his photos down and laughed. “Sorry, I got carried away.” He turned and looked up at Adam, who looked right back at Gansey with a genuine smile. Gansey couldn’t help but smile too. Adam looked so… _relaxed_. When Gansey, Blue, and Henry had left, Adam had always looked stressed and wary. Of course, he had had good reason to be stressed and wary. Adam’s deal with Cabeswater had taken a mental toll on the poor boy, and the physical effort of keeping up with the ley lines was enough to put significant weight on his shoulders. When they had left for their trip, Adam had just been released from Cabeswater and had made a new, equally dangerous promise: to be Ronan Lynch’s boyfriend.

But wow, what a difference the relationship had made. The worry lines had disappeared around his deep-set blue eyes and had been replaced by soft smile lines. He was even tanner, if that was possible, because of all his time spent out at the Barns. The tension had gone out of his shoulders, and he looked well-rested. He didn’t look like the Adam Parrish Gansey had known, but he looked like the Adam Parrish he was always meant to be. 

“What are you smiling at?” Adam asked. Gansey blinked with a start; he’d gotten lost in thought and had been staring for too long. 

“Nothing. You- you just look so much happier now. I’m so happy for you and Ronan.” 

Adam’s grin grew even bigger and he laid his head on the pillow at the end of the couch, looking up at the high ceiling of the Barns. “I am the luckiest guy in Henrietta,” he laughed. “I’ve got a Greywaren for a boyfriend, a satyr for an adopted daughter, and an immortal nerd for a best friend. Life is perfect.” 

Adam reached over and ruffled Gansey’s hair, and the second his fingers brushed Gansey’s scalp, everything went dark.

Adam was thrown back in time. Back to when he could smell the scent of trees no matter where he was. Back to when he could hear the wind rustling through every leaf. Back to when those leaves curled around his eyes and hands. Back to when life was timeless. 

Back to when he had his Cabeswater connection.

All of that power, that otherworldliness he had held inside him for a year was thrown back into his being. He could fall back into the vines and branches of the forest. He could relax in the shade of the tall trees. He could rest on the mossy pathways of Cabeswater. He could-

“Damn it, Adam! Wake up!”

Adam was yanked back into his own body. His eyes refocused and stared right up at Ronan’s face, inches away from his and fraught with worry. 

“What the hell, you two?” Ronan exclaimed, pulling away from Adam and standing up. Adam’s hand had been tugged off of Gansey’s head, and Gansey was busy rubbing his red cheek. 

“Did-Did you slap me?” Gansey asked Opal, who was sitting next to him on the floor. She nodded. “Why did you do that?”

“Because you two were in some fucking trance, that’s why,” Ronan answered for her. "Opal and I came out of the kitchen to find Adam here with his hand firmly on Gansey’s head and eyes looking dead and empty, like they did whenever he scryed. And Gansey-” Ronan’s hands flew to his head, rubbing over his shaven hair. “You were just as catatonic, eyes staring off into nothing, and… and you whispering in the language of the trees. Cabeswater language.” 

“Was I really?” Gansey asked, completely bewildered and still rubbing his sore cheek. 

Ronan knelt down next to Gansey and stared him in the eyes, blue focusing on hazel. “Etin teir y’lentes caiele?”

“Ronan, I have no idea what you’re saying,” Gansey replied, worry creeping into his usually steady voice. 

“Exactly.” Ronan sat back on his heels. “You can’t understand Cabeswater, so why all of a sudden were you speaking its language? Perfectly, might I add.”

“And what, exactly, was I saying?” 

“Something along the lines of ‘Again,’ ‘Adam,’ and ‘unable to wait.’ A lot of it was lost to my screaming at you guys to wake up.”

Adam sat up, feeling as if he’d just run a mile. His heart was racing as fast as Kavinsky’s Mitsubishi, but his body had lost all its energy. 

Gansey stood up shakily, letting Ronan grab his arm and help him to his feet. Then, looking intently down at Adam, he asked, “Did you…feel everything I just did?”

“That depends,” Adam began, twisting so that his long legs hung off the couch. “Did you lose all sense of self and plunge into a forest-y oblivion?”

“Precisely my experience,” Gansey affirmed. 

“Wait,” Ronan interjected, gaze flicking between Adam and Gansey. “When Adam touched your head, you _both_ were overtaken by Cabeswater?” Then, only to Adam, he asked, “I thought you haven’t been able to connect with Cabeswater since Gansey died.”

“I haven’t. Well, not until just now.”

They both turned to look at Gansey, who had fallen uncharacteristically silent. He was still leaning on Ronan, drained of his energy just like Adam had been. 

Then, after much thought, Gansey asked, “Do you think this is all because Cabeswater recreated me? It gave itself up to be my life force. In a way, Cabeswater _became_ me. When Adam and I connected, I… I wasn’t myself anymore.” Ronan and Adam noticed the tone of Gansey’s voice changing. It was slowly becoming the same voice they had heard in the Cave of Ravens. The same voice that only ever surfaced when Gansey was afraid. “I felt Cabeswater overtake me. I had no control. It was as if I had never even been myself in the first place. I didn’t know who I was…I didn’t know what I was.”

Gansey looked up at Adam. “All I knew was the feeling of the forest, the shade cooling my soul, the leaves brushing against my mind. It was…exceptional. Fascinating. But terrifying at the same time. Is that…Is that what it was like for you?”

Adam hesitated before nodding. “In a basic sense, yes. However, I never completely lost myself. I always had some control- if I was careful. Maybe…maybe because you’ve never dealt with Cabeswater before, you accidentally went all in and gave yourself up instead of holding on to you.”

“I didn’t know I had anything to fight against in the first place. I mean, ever since I died, life has indeed felt timeless, and sometimes I tend to fall into a light daze whenever we cross a ley line- but nothing more than that, really.”

Opal, who had stood idly by as the boys tried to make sense of the Cabeswater connection, tugged on Ronan’s jeans and pointed at her open mouth. 

“Opal’s right,” Ronan said, taking his dream daughter by the hand. “We should eat. We’ll figure this whole thing out tomorrow. Until then-” He pointed a finger at Gansey, then at Adam, then back to Gansey. “No touching.”

 

A few days later, Adam was working a late shift at Boyd’s. His college was on summer break, so he had picked up his job at Boyd’s for the next two months. Tonight, he had the garage door open in order to let the fresh air dilute the overwhelming scent of motor oil. Adam wore his coveralls tied at the waist, and his green t-shirt was splattered with grease- along with his arms, face, and hair. 

He wiped the sweat off his brow once again on that hot night, smearing oil on his forehead. He had been trying to repair this truck for a couple of hours now, and he still had lots of progress to make. The fluorescent light flickered above his head as he leaned against the truck’s chipping red paint. He was tired; no, he was _exhausted._

All he wanted right now was to go home. Home didn’t mean a closed off trailer on the side of a dirt road. Home didn’t mean Monmouth Manufacturing. Home didn’t mean a tiny room above St. Agnes’ Church.

Home was at the Barns, with Ronan sleeping by his side, with the fire crackling in the fireplace, with Opal trying to walk in his shoes and falling over every five seconds. Home was-

Somebody knocked on the door to the garage from the front room, bringing Adam back to reality. _Who would be knocking this late at night?_ Adam thought curiously. 

“We’re closed,” Adam called out to the mysterious customer. The door creaked open anyways. 

Adam sighed in thinly veiled exasperation and turned, saying “I’m sorry, but we’re clo-”

He stopped when he realized who had come to pay him a visit.

Gansey stood by the door, shutting it carefully so as to not make a lot of noise. He wore his yellow polo shirt and had on grey slacks despite the heat. “If you’re closed,” Gansey wondered, “then why are you still working?”

“Some of us have to work past our shifts in order to get paid,” Adam explained, watching Gansey take in the dirty, disorganized scene with disdain. “Why are you here?”

Gansey looked at Adam abruptly, taken aback by the tone of Adam’s voice. Realizing how the phrase had sounded, Adam held up his hand and revised, “Wait, I’m sorry. I just meant why are you visiting tonight? You’ve never stopped by before.”

Gansey picked his way across the grimy floor towards Adam, careful to keep his boat shoes clean. “I was thinking about the other night and the whole Cabeswater incident; I know that you used to allow Cabeswater to comfort you and- and I thought maybe- with a little more control on my part- I could do the same?”

Adam’s eyes narrowed dubiously. “Didn’t we both nearly pass out last time?”

Gansey rubbed his bottom lip with his thumb. “Well, yes. We did. However, I’ve been trying to connect with my…Cabeswater half? Is that what I should call it? I can’t ignore the fact that I’m…” He trailed off momentarily, eyes staring out into the dark night outside the garage. 

“I can’t ignore the fact that I am not the same ‘Gansey’ as I was before the death.” He dropped his hand away from his mouth and looked at Adam, searching for a response. 

Adam didn’t know what to say. In all honesty, he personally didn’t know how much Gansey had changed; he’d spent the past year exploring the world with Blue and Henry. Why wasn’t he asking them? On the other hand, Adam had noticed that Gansey tended to space out occasionally. 

He also had that feeling of something _more_ around him, as if his aura had changed. Again, something Blue would know more about. Adam didn’t know how to explain the _more-ness_ of Gansey yet, but he knew it was there. 

“Gansey,” Adam started, but he didn’t finish. Instead, he stepped away from the truck and set his shoulders square. “You want to try this again?”

Gansey nodded, taking a deep breath. Not like Ronan’s smoker breaths through the mouth and out through the nose; Gansey’s deep breaths were subtler, only evidenced by the movement of his chest. Probably a trick he mastered in order to project confidence around all the politicians and governors he met. 

“If I can help you relax,” Gansey said, lifting his hand with caution, “then I want to. I came by because I know that work stresses you out, and I want to help you. I’m ready to try again.”

Gansey closed his eyes and delicately placed his left hand on Adam’s shoulder. 

Suddenly, all of the fatigue and frustration Adam had built up over the course of the day was washed away. The tension faded and was replaced with the magical presence of Cabeswater. Leaves and vines wrapped around his being, as if the forest was giving him a Welcome Back hug. This time, Adam’s soul descended slowly into the dream-like trance as opposed to the drop he’d experienced the first time Gansey had reconnected him to Cabeswater. 

Gansey’s eyebrows were furrowed in concentration, but Adam couldn’t see it. Gansey was not relaxed, but instead held on to his inner self with an iron grip, refusing to let Cabeswater rip his soul from his body. He took special care to stay in control, something he had practiced for years. 

Control was something Gansey valued, which explained why the first time Cabeswater had taken over had been so frightening. The whole ordeal felt like one of his panic attacks whenever a hornet buzzed by his ear. He felt the need to withdraw, to hide in a corner, to _scream._ But, just like with his fear of hornets, Gansey pushed it deep down, telling himself that everything was going to be okay. He could resist. He could fight. He could keep himself all _Gansey,_ not all Cabeswater.

So he let the dream forest exist, but he made his own deal with it. _I keep myself, and you can occasionally reach out to Adam. I am in control._ And so he was. Gansey took his hand off of Adam’s shoulder.

Adam’s eyes flew open, and he let out a slow breath of relief. Gansey took a step back, knees buckling briefly, and he leaned against the truck. 

Adam gave Gansey a small smile, rubbing his shoulder in the place where Gansey had held him. “Thank you. That…that really helped.”

Gansey simply nodded, trying to slow his heart rate through measured breaths. Adam noticed his friend’s weakened state and asked, “Does it hurt you? When you channel Cabeswater?”

Nearly recovered, Gansey stood up straight again. “Hurt? No. It’s just…draining. I just- practice. That’s all I need- some practice.”

“Hey,” Adam said, reaching out before pulling his hand back as a second thought. “I don’t need Cabeswater anymore, Gansey. Don’t put yourself through this. It’s a double-edged sword- simultaneously energizing and exhausting.”

“No, Adam. You made a deal with Cabeswater and suddenly lost that connection. Don’t tell me that had no repercussions on you.”

It was true. It had taken Adam a long time to go back to being, well, normal. He had missed the comforting presence of Cabeswater. He had missed the feeling of making a difference. He had felt… _more_. And it was true that whenever Gansey allowed Cabeswater back into Adam’s life, it was bliss.

“I’ll get better at it, I promise,” Gansey said earnestly. “I know how you feel about charity, but this is different. I want to give you back something I took away.”

Adam held out his hand for a fist-bump, and Gansey held his fist an inch away, careful not to touch. It was different, but it could work.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Follow me on Tumblr @thehufflepuffshuffle for more TRC fanart and headcanons.


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